A message was penned on the back of the envelope: “If I was meant to pop out of bed, I would sleep in a toaster.”
I opened the 6-by-9-inch packet and shook out a sheaf of papers. The sender, Marcie Danyi of Niles attached a note: “Look what I found in my joke collection.”
Now this is ...

Last month, I brought you the extremely important scientific scoop that — despite what Mom claimed glopping oatmeal in your bowl — ice cream is the intelligent choice for breakfast. Ice cream makes your brain run as smoothly as cookies and cream.
The revelation raised serious questions ...

“We never get lost anymore,” she said. “Why don’t you ever take me some place where we’re lost?”
It’s true. The adventure, the excitement, the romance of getting lost is, well, lost.
“This neighborhood doesn’t look familiar,” Terry said. “I must have taken a wrong ...

I called off sick the other day. It was a horrible experience. Plus, I felt lousy. The worst thing about calling off sick when you actually are is feeling far too yucky to enjoy the yearned-for day off.
The second-worst thing is that one’s brain tends to be as unreliable as a queasy ...

Some people get paid to be critics. The rest of us offer the service for free.
It’s easy to do, because the less we know about a thing, the more confidently we can lecture someone else how to do it.
This is why, for example, the people who know parenting the best are the critics who never ...

One of the greatest quotes ever uttered about life in northeast Ohio is this: “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”
Never has a philosophical platitude proved to be so true. And perplexing.
I am writing this column two hours after my wife and I took a lovely spring walk on ...

I am not at my mental best in the morning. Actually, I’ve never been at my mental best, but mornings rank even lesser best than my normal less best.
See what I mean? It’s morning. Even if a proper thought tries to latch onto my brain, it slides off in the shower suds and gurgles down the ...

Before the PA system’s final crackle, I’d burrowed beneath the table.
“Will Burton Cole please come to the front desk. Burton Cole, please come to the front desk.”
I whimpered, and perhaps sucked my thumb a second or two. I might be 40 years removed from the cold, steel door of the ...

Today my dad celebrates his 82nd birthday, and I think it’s high time that he shared his greatest secret with me — Dad Powers.
When I was kid, I couldn’t wait to grow into Dad Powers. My firstborn filled the crib with howls and giggles more than 28 years ago. Now she’s a fully ...

It happened again. “That cost less than I expected.”
The pretty young fast-food clerk never bothered to glance my way as she handed over the receipt. “Your order number is 22.”
I slipped off my bifocals and squinted at the receipt to find the pricing error. There it was. The words ...

I’m thinking about retiring to a Caribbean island. It’s so within my price range — now that I’ve won the Euro Raffle.
Does anyone happen to know how many Corvettes 2 million euros is worth?
Anyway, I’m considering offering asylum on my island to the Nigerian ambassador who barely ...

Making do is what I do best. I see no reason to bog myself down doing things the so-called “right way” when “making do” accomplishes the same thing with far less frustration.
Besides, folks usually find fault no matter what. So if the easy road and the hard road both drive you to the ...

If there ever was time for Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap to settle down for a long winter’s nap, it’s January.
Unfortunately, my bosses — as so often occurs — hold a differing viewpoint. So I do my best to shrug off bed covers and doldrums and face January as if it were full of ...

Nothing attracts a swarm of friends braced with sure-fire home remedies than the common cold. You can’t even sniffle without some junior scientist rushing to your side to test her latest concoctions and theories.
“Quick, burn this turmeric and inhale the smoke. Clears those sniffles right ...

Merry Christmas! My wish for you is that as you read this, we both are wearing soft, warm socks that we plucked from beneath the tree this morning.
That’s either a sign that I’ve learned a less materialistic meaning of Christmas or that I’ve given up on ever receiving the G.I. Joe “The ...

My sister snatched away the fancy fork I’d been twirling on the table, refolded the green cloth napkin, and realigned the silverware into perfect rows, just like it had been when I ambled into her house.
“Santa Claus has to be a woman.”
I held the holly-rimmed water glass up to my eye ...

I just want to pay my bills. But creditors refuse to take my money.
Oh, not outright. They insist on a password.
When we were kids, we built blanket forts in the living room and wouldn’t allow anyone to crawl in who didn’t recite the secret password. Twenty minutes later, the fort ...

The latest social media craze is the mannequin challenge. That’s when a cluster of people hold poses like statues while a person with a camera weaves around the bodies to post the tableau to Twitter or other social sites.
It’s sort of like a giant game of freeze tag played by ...

I always suspected health food was up to no good. It turns out it’s spying on you.
MIT researchers announced a couple weeks ago that they engineered bomb-sniffing spinach plants.
Researchers embedded sensors into the plants so that when the spinach roots detect chemicals used in land mines ...